In January 1996 Primary Colors, the anonymous novel by a political insider, was released by Random House. Thanks in part to curiosity about the author, it was on the New York Times best-seller list 20 weeks, nine weeks as number one. At mid-year 1.2 million hardbacks had sold, and it was being translated into foreign languages. Warner paid $1.5 million Read More ›
Readers have often wondered what Walter Hooper’s motivation is, and of course no one knows. But C. S. Lewis gave us a possible insight to that mystery in his little-known 1948 essay “Kipling’s World,” in Selected Literary Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969). There Lewis analyzed his ambivalent response to Kipling: strong admiration and strong recoil. “To belong, to be Read More ›
According to Books & Culture, celebrated Canadian novelist Robertson Davies, who died at 82 on 2 December 1995, had many careers: “as the last of the Oxford aesthetes, as a stagemanager at London’s Old Vic theatre, as the newspaper columnist who created and popularized the curmudgeonly Canadian commentator ‘Samuel Marchbanks,’ as a hopeful young playwright, as a disappointed middle-aged playwright Read More ›
Andrew Morton, widely regarded as the world authority on authorship attribution, developed the cusum (or QSUM) technique in 1988 after 40 years of research. His method identifies authorship irrespective of genre, over long periods of time, and from an early age. Since 1990 it has been accepted in law courts as a sound identifier of disputed utterance, and has been Read More ›
by Brian W. Aldiss with David Wingrove (London: Victor Gollancz, 1986), 188-189. Aldous Huxley was the grandson of the great T.H. Huxley, the supporter of Darwin who became Wells’s instructor late in life. He achieved at least three reputations, as a cynic in the day of the Bright Young Things, as a mystical philosopher, and, after his death, as a Read More ›
A passage from the essay “Christian Reunion” appeared as “Quotation of the Month” in the January 1996 issue of CSL: Bulletin of the New York C. S. Lewis Society, edited by James Como. The May-June issue features James Tetreault’s article about Peter Milward’s 1995 book A Challenge to C. S. Lewis. Tetreault, a long-time member of the New York Society, Read More ›
Correction: According to the June issue of the Southern California C. S. Lewis Society Newsletter, the on-line address for the World of CSL is really http://www.cache.net/~john/ cslewis/index.html, not the one published there earlier. Newsletter editor Sam Konkin expects to launch two new sites soon. Correction: In the spring 1996 issue, You Say Tomato, by Paul McCusker and Adrian Plass, was Read More ›
Missionaries to the Skeptics: Christian Apologists for the Twentieth Century by John A Sims, Professor of Religion and History at Lee College (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1995). Paper, $22.95. “Seen here in the context of their personal stories, C. S. Lewis, E. J. Carnell, and Reinhold Niebuhr give a human face to the theological task and isolate the enduring Read More ›
Companions for the Soul: A yearlong journey of miracles, prayers, and epiphanies. edited by Robert R. Hudson and Shelley Townsend-Hudson (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1995). Hard cover with ribbon marker, 366 classic Christian readings, $17.99. “These devotional insights are the true treasures of our heritage — earthy, loving, celestial, sweet, deep, and holy. The Hudsons have a rich knowledge of the Read More ›
I am not either attacking or defending Evolution. I believe that Christianity can still be believed, even if Evolution is true…. Many who have been or are being moved towards Christianity by my books would be deterred by finding that I was connected with anti-Darwinism…. I can’t help sharing a sort of glee with you about the explosion of poor Read More ›